


Standard Winchester Life

by cantonforking



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-26 08:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/280948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantonforking/pseuds/cantonforking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> I wrote this after Slash Fiction [07x06] and it goes into my own AU from there. This is pretty much pure imagery. Spoilers for Pilot [01x01] and Slash Fiction [07x06]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standard Winchester Life

Sam breathes at the same time as his brother. He always has. They synchronise in the spaces of the dark, in the gap between the standard twin beds in the standard Winchester life. Night brings together their sins, paints them in shadows and reties all the strings between the brothers that have snapped in the progression of the day.  
   
Night pulls them together and sews up the wounds so that when they wake, Sam breathes at the same time as his brother.

  
   
There's an intruder in his house, creaking footsteps in the life that Sam has cobbled together on a hope and a prayer. The shadow slinks from room to room, lingering on homely touches like the picture of Jessica and her smile. Their fight is short and vicious, heavy blows and electric pain. Sam knows who it is before the second blow meets his block.  
   
"Easy tiger."  
   
"Dean?”  
   
It's salvation and damnation in one second. The traces of moonlight cling to the edges of Dean's face, tracing the outline, leaving night to fill in the three-dimensional shadows. Sam's brother has aged a hundred years in the time they have been apart. Lifetimes are written across his face, under Sam's fingertips, in crow's feet and scar tissue. It's salvation and damnation and Sam is certain their hearts are synchronised.

  
   
The world is bright and cold, crusted in a sun without warmth. There is heat in the driver's seat, the fire breath of a brother's presence, a perfect contrast to the sun, his foil. It's a lie caught in betrayal, wrapped in murder and stabbed with a knife. An elephant sits in the backseat and Sam can see it in the rear-view mirror so he does his best to ignore it.  
   
Dean stops his baby on a pier in the middle of nowhere, a spindle leg that stretches into the great unknown. He is talking as they get out, small conversation, wasted breath. Sam wants to scream as he turns from the water and is crushed by the hatred he feels when he looks at his brother. Somewhere Amy Pond's blood soaks the fibres of the carpet and her cat-like eyes stare glassy at Death.  
   
Everything is wrong. Sam is out of breath and out of mind. His pulse races like a wild horse across arid plains and his compass is pointing south. His brother is smiling at him with trivial words as the antelope taunts the lion. The world snaps and Sam’s thoughts turn to storms in his eyes.  
   
“Go.”  
   
“Sorry Sam.”  
   
Apologies rain like fake diamonds on wedding receptions. The Earth turns and Sam walks in the opposite direction. Previous lives fade into dots on the horizon until they are finally lost in the heat haze of a cold sun. Dean is gone and even Sam’s fury can’t help him steady his breathing. Fingernails find the stitches that will never heal and dig into the palm of his hand. Blood falls like red rain on the pier, teardrops trapped and sucked in by the sun’s rays.  
   
Perhaps this is what it feels like to lose your religion. Atlas shifts his stance and the seas roil. Sam doesn’t know what he is doing, not in this world of car exhaust and kicked-up gravel. His shoes are manacles clamped around his ankles but in time he makes it to a motel. Standard single room, warped Winchester life.  
   
Perhaps this is what it feels like to fall out of love. The reflection in the mirror sneers and glares and laughs until he cannot look for a second longer. ‘Don’t’ he whispers and Hell appear in the stubborn visage. The bag by the bed is half-full of Sam. The other half is Dean’s stupid clothes or Dean’s damn weapons or Dean’s fucking boots or Dean’s lingering presence. In that bag are two lives - or maybe it has always been just one.  
   
Perhaps this is what it feels like to cleave off a limb. Nothing fits. The bathroom is too big, no elbows to poke into sides, no shoulders to knock against each other. Night comes too quietly, suffocating blankets of silence unbroken by a second breath to keep the beat. Sam reaches out and there is air under his fingertips instead of warm skin. In his dreams Dean is dead and his brain is missing.  
   
Perhaps this is how it felt to bury a brother. Hell creeps through the door and he barely remembers.  
   
Morning comes with a warm sun and the sound of Sam’s brother on the phone. His words are split and broken, those of a man standing in a standard twin room and a cracked Winchester life. They are no more than an hour apart, subconsciously drawing concentric circles around each other. The dial tone comes after diamond apologies and heartfelt sighs. Chick-flick moments hammered into rings.

  
   
The pier is a sun-kissed paradise, an island stretching out into the glittering waters. Baby moves slick and smooth, sliding over the tarmac and gravel. She has carried the fate of the world in knife-scratched scars and toy soldiers who never came back from their missions. Sam has missed her, has missed the chariot that kick-started his memories.  
   
Dean is made of wide smiles and relief hidden in under layers of falsity that never mattered to Sam because he is the one who can always see through them. Somewhere Amy lies beneath hard-packed earth. Somewhere Madeline scatters in ashes on the ground. Somewhere a monster dies and people shed tears on their graves.  
   
Sam is made of doubts and sharp-looks that tell his brother that there won’t be a third chance although they both know that isn’t true. Dean takes his brother’s bag and throws it in the boot on top of one of Sam’s shirts. Dust has collected in the corners of the passenger seat, or so it seems to him anyway.  
   
The road stretches out in front of them, unwritten, unblemished, unclaimed. Sam breathes at the same time as his brother. They synchronise under the sun’s rays, in the gap between the passenger seat and the driver’s, half-asleep in the standard Winchester home. Between them scars knit together like fingers entwined and though they will never fade, the sting is muted.  
   
Their pulses beat in time and Sam throws back his head and laughs. He has never felt this free before. Puzzlement lingers on Dean’s brow but crow’s feet trace his green green eyes and everything is balanced perfectly. Their world is wrapped in betrayal and distrust. Their world is wrapped in bad decisions and smoking guns. Their world is wrapped in ash smiles and sharp elbows. Their world is wrapped in co-dependent brothers and tied in a ribbon of monster’s intestines. The tag reads ‘standard Winchester life’.  


  



End file.
